THE COMSTOCK MEMORIAL 
15 
LETTER FROM DR. L. 0 . HOWARD 
I have been expecting until to-day to join you in Ithaca on Saturday 
and to help the rest of you tell dear Comstock how much we love 
him, how much we glory in his distinguished career as a teacher and 
producer, and how we wish him many more years of successful and 
uninterrupted work. But the government does not consider the per¬ 
sonal wishes of its slaves, and a wholly unexpected official emergency 
will prevent me from taking the train to Ithaca to-morrow. 
What fortunate fellows you college teachers are, with your long 
summer vacations, your sabbatical years, and your retiring pensions, 
but how abundantly Prof. Comstock deserves all these and more. 
And just think! if there had been as good a Civil Service law in 1880 
as there is to-day, Comstock might still have been chief of the ento¬ 
mological service of the government and might to-day be writing you 
such a letter as this, explaining how he could not escape from Uncle 
Sam to join you in honoring some other fellow. 
I was one of Comstock’s first students, and we worked together in 
the little crowded room in the tower of McGraw Hall for four quickly 
passing years. And then he got me my first post in Washington, and 
six or seven months later came to the United States Department of 
Agriculture as my chief. Then followed two very happy years. 
Professor and Mrs. Comstock and I worked together, and almost 
lived together, under such delightfully intimate and perfectly sympa¬ 
thetic conditions that after thirty-three years thoughts of those days 
are among my dearest recollections. The amount of work we did 
in those two years, with the very important help of Theodore Per- 
gande, was extraordinary. I believe that I have never done an equal 
amount of work in the same time since. That was because we were 
very young, because we were filled with enthusiasm, and because of 
our sympathetic intimacy. 
And then they went back to Cornell. Since those days the 
entomological service of the Department of Agriculture here in 
Washington has had a remarkable growth, but the growth of Com¬ 
stock’s department at Ithaca has been just as extraordinary. And 
no one will deny that, aside from the influences which have operated 
in common with the two institutions, the dominant influence at 
Cornell has been Comstock’s personality. 
He cannot be praised too highly. His sound published work, the 
great department he has built up, his graduates in all parts of the 
world, offer memorials of his own making beside which the memorial 
